CHANGE THROUGH ' MEMERY '

context:
This thread has been issues on a COMPLEX-M Mailing List.
The editing has kept the major pieces of the messages.
(in blue my correspondents - this color, myself)

LIST of the MESSAGES

• 1) Observation - absence of memory

• 2) Answer - what we want to talk about ?

• 3) Question - could be something else than linearity ?

• 3b) Position - should be part of the mind.

• 4) Cross-mail - To begin with three positions

• 4) Cross-mail - A Significand plus...

• 5) Reinforcement - all the opposite

• 6) Position - the analysis of the complex (a restoration)

1) William THEAUX, NYC 97/11/25 13:49:52 - Resistance and Emergence

I have applied the psychoanalytic demon.
In the topic (amongst the 20 last msgs) titled
[COMPLEX-M] understanding resistance to change
I have made a search in every 'bodies' for the word 'memory'
The result has been 'zero'

As we know, Psychoanalysis is a method which looks for what is repressed. When one applies this method, one usually consequently suffers a trauma. I confess that it is hard to believe that in this list the search for understanding resistance to change does not mention memory.

May be there are more msgs (i have do not have present access to earlier archives) and perhaps someone would like to experiment for himself the feeling in facing the repressed. Yet at that point 20 samples is a sufficient base for...

any comments?

2)  Date:Fri, 28 Nov 1997 17:49:27 EST
From: John A MIKES <ami_kes@JUNO.COM>

Dr. William THEAUX <wtheaux@club-internet.fr> wrote 97/11/25:

> I have made a search in every 'bodies' for the word 'memory'
> The result has been 'zero'

Hurray, William, you hit it right! - except for the list itself. We venture into all kinds of sidetrack-topics from complexity and you should not look for the real professional shortsightedness in us, complexists, what you may find on lists for PSY, Consc., Mind, - the endless bickering when everybody blows her/his own horn in unending discussions to show themselves smart and infallible. Here we venture into adjacent topics (the main one, I believe, turns out to be the complexity of economical activity, corporations, people management) but we keep in mind complexity as well. (Michael tell me if I am wrong) I wonder whether your 'search' for MEMORY was prompted by a thirst to learn something new about it (in that case you are in the wrong list) or YOU know something about memory? If so, please, tell us, it would be fascinating: nobody knows the first thing about e.g. how do we just recall the date of the Magna Charta or the smell of Gramma's cake at our 10th birthday-party.

The molecular neurologists assume subtle changes in brain-tissue by absorbed information - as I understand: sensorial ones, the inter-connection of which may serve a coding as to its deciphering. Even if we allow this, we have to remember first, before we remember it, to recall the combination of the coded content. And there is another stale example of mine: what neuronal combination will produce the memory of 'i', the square root of(-1)? Or the validity of the Tao?

If you just miss the information expected from a diversified and educated ensemble, like this list, I join you excitedly.

IMO factual (like human) memory is part of the qualia called mind, emerged from the total assemblage of a person (body, history, environment sideways and 'up', higher complexity levels we belong to, etc). In lesser complex situations a memory shows even in the so-called inanimate world, not only the polymer-shrink packaging, but the chem. affinity, physical law, biological morphology, wherever we look, nature 'remembers' her routes to follow. Maybe we should identify closer what we want to talk about?

Thanx for bringing up this thorn in our epistemology, I am grateful for giving me the opportunity to steam off.

3)  Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 00:25:43 EST
From: ami_kes@juno.com (John A MIKES)

Dear William, thanx for writing in private. I copy this correspondence to Deborah, who asked the question you referred to. She is a friend with an open mind --. Question: what kind of "Analyst" are you? What is CYBEK?

To the topic: IMO we 'know' phenomenologically a bout memory, I haven't seen mechanism - proposal that made sense. I can concur with the tissue-markers, the observable or even below-observability molecular/subatomic changes in brain-tissue (not necessarily neurons), that occur upon mental functions as a feedback - reaction. I allow for a tremendous code by which such markers may be addressable and differentiate from math expression/dates through smell or esthetic repulsion to visual or pain-experiences and beyond. (wrong example: a computer disk can find the bits haphazardously spread to compose a message. This is a 'linear' static storage, unchanged, unless overwritten - which a friend compared to forgetfulness.

I said: and the computer-virus is the Alzheimer). The memory is not the storage. It is the retrieval, sometimes an unwilling remembering, The system, affecting the retrieval and effecting the recombination of the stored material-markers into experience-thoughts.

The qualia of the mind, transcending space, time, logic, maybe awareness or attention. In my lectures such mechanism did not emerge. I certainly will read your Website, and hope that you have something explanatory.

This was behind my (flippant?) remark. I am at the natural science-side (Ph.D. in chemistry, D.Sc. in polymers) and have been persuing the cosmo-physical postquantum world view - mind topic during the past 10 years, as a homespun-fireside philosopher.

I hope you transcend the 'gap' (denied by Pat Churchland) between el-chem reactions and personal feelings. There are uncanny levels of complexity in between in the nested hierarchy of interconnections, a level of which we may assign to the 'mind', with its emerged qualification as mental functions/memory.

3bis)  Date: Thu, 4 Dec 1997 23:22:58 EST
From: John A MIKES <ami_kes@JUNO.COM>

William drew some 'personalized' conclusions from my remark about being in the wrong list, if he looks for memory-research. There are specialized lists, e.g. the JCS-Online, Psyche-D and Psyche-B, the Cognitive Sci. list, etc., where researchers in that particular topic assemble their newer findings and conclusions. Of course the members of Complex-M are knowledgeable, they have their opinions about memory, but the professional memoryologists use different turf.

William was kind enough to send me his post in private email and I tried to answer him in some length. If the list wants to go into such details, I can post my reply any time: I work with some floppy archiving and save the posts.

In brief: IMO (and this IS an opinion) memory is part of the animal complexity we call in humans: mind. It is emergent upon the high level assemblage of brain (body, matter, biology, etc) and interconnection with environment, higher level complexities we belong to, like the society, biosphere, cosmos, and whatever may there be to be discovered.

The immediate tool, the neuronal brain is under thorough investigation and details of tissue-mechanism (cellular, electrochemical, subatomic) are explored in depth. From there on there is a gap towards the mental events, some of them aspatial and atemporal. I wonder if substantial conclusions can be drawn on the mechanism of mental events without much more knowledge across that gap. We need to penetrate the complexity of the mind (whatever we call: mind). Memory is part of it.

4)  Cross-Mails

5)  Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 20:52:20 -0700
From: "Benet (Ben) Kutz" <ideatree@PLANET.EON.NET>

Hi, William

..........

With some. Others of us haven't quite bought into the "meme" thing as represented so far.

..........

I'm afraid I can't agree with the repression argument you raise, on the grounds that our very nature may be exactly that which obviates the "analysis" part. I don't count this as "bad". Analysis is a tool, rather than a way of life. Examples abound on this planet, though not much in the intellectual elite (scientific types) of the West, of people who never analyse, and yet manage solid connexions with reality. I'm thinking here of Zen and Taoist masters, Yogis, and people of similar training.

..........

>This is why a
>procedure that supports our transformation must be supplied at the same
>time as we implement/define the world with complex systems.

Do we get to "define" the world, or does it define us? Somehow, this (your) point of view implies that we are in control of the definition process as though we stand outside of reality - but we don't.

6)  To restore a possible analysis of our participation in the world.
William THEAUX, NYC 97/12/13 15:59:00

Summary:

Having noticed the absence of mention of the concept of 'memory' in the thread
[COMPLEX-M] understanding resistance to change,
I inserted a post about 'repression' in the list.

Since then a few messages have gradually worked the definition and/or place of memory regarding complexity. Before I collect more information from the list archives, I want to make more precise how I understand the input of psychoanalysis.

Continuation:

Nothing has invalidate yet that there is no resistance to change without repression of memory - we are still dealing (assuming/repressing) that there is no change without memory (memory implies change - repression of memory implies repetition). We are even meaning that changes equate memory since we live under the aegis of Darwin's law (evolution by death - alias by loss or interruption of memory). If something is changing, it keeps its memory; otherwise it become something else (another species).
It is simple, yet complex for we partake with these assessment.
The resistance to change is the repression of memory - this is the meaning that I call psychoanalysis (for I believe that psychoanalysis covers the three fields of memory well defined by J.Mike.)

First, psychoanalysis is not a mnemotechnique. If psychoanalysis is the Art of Memory, a phase during which the Art of Memory has been a mnemotechnique, indeed, is over since the Renaissance [].
However, from that moment, the Art of Memory has been repressed (Re: Bruno and the termination of Hermeticism). It remained undergrounded for 300 years [], until its re-emergence as psychoanalysis. At this moment (yet after 100 years of resistance with Freud & Co), the Art of Memory (the released Psychoanalysis as PLAN) proves to be more complex than a mnemotechnique: the AoM/PLAN is conditioning the change that memory allows.

The second field is biology/physics. Biophysics is the very ground of psychoanalysis []. It is noticeable that Freud (once controlled the effects of Cocaine) covered rapidly his foundation with the alibi of psychology (mnemotechnique, cognitive science), but his route shows that it was eventually to reach a mass-psychology. It is when psychoanalysis grasp the domain of sociology, that it restores (by integration of the Collective knowledge - Science- in its operation) a prospect for transformation/change of the human species and its biophysics.
At that phase psychoanalysis (PLAN/Art of Memory) matches Mike's third field. It addresses the entire field of complexity. As it has been said :

>In such respect memory is a phenomenon more involved
>than just remembering an event, a color, etc...

Indeed, Psychoanalysis implies the change which follows such remembrance.

As I have just mentioned 'the entire field of complexity', I must pledge against an heresy - for a code of language forbid to say that Complexity could be total (entire).
Yet we uphold this code for we cannot symbolically re-present the lack of finitude in Complexity (BTW: this is what is brought on PLAN's stage : by extraction a minus-one denounces this lack in our social representation). Except for this code, Complexity falls in the rank of what we imagine (whose lack is always filled by the representation); complexity may become One there. It is the mode of our intelligence where Complexity is exhaustive ('entire'). It is from this imaginary mode that a minus-one is extracted so a surplus may emerge in real.

A graph may help here [the code is on the left side - our imagination is filling up the right side]:

Click on the white ellipse to see where comes the minus-one (extracted member).

Click on the green ellipse to see the representation always filling up the Imagined

It is only from that surplus that an infinite outcome is brought out of complexity [otherwise, complexity remains represented - imagined and 'entire' - on right side]. We may note there, that this represents also the Marxist 'surplus value'.

A second graph, where the surplus-value turns out to identify the consumer is to recall that this model brings in a rotation, a circulation where each terms (for example 'complexity' as well, passes from such phase, Imaginary, to another: Real, and others...). Such type of formula, developed with Lacan and Cybernetics, make a premiere in Science - they allow the formulator to be included in the formulated. This formulation makes a shift which can be compared with the introduction of the zero in the calculus of Roman numbers - in the present shift, the Semblant (aka seeming, meme) is like the 'zero' in the past [].

I wish these explanations could restore the understanding of Psychoanalysis as the integral mode of Science taking and operating with the human into account.

Another objection has arisen against my generalization of psychoanalysis; Ben writes:

>...the repression argument you raise, on the grounds that our very nature may
>be exactly that which obviates the "analysis" part. I don't count this as "bad".

and objects:

>Analysis is a tool, rather than a way of life ... your point of view
>implies that we are in control of the definition process as

Interestingly enough, there is nothing 'bad' in the repression. This emotional argument indicates a misunderstanding. Repression is the first layer that organizes memory, it enables a representation and thenafter the way to recollect both its meaning and the way we understand it (thus gaining an integral signification). Ben probably had this 'bad' feeling since he may know psychoanalysis at the place of the Inquisition from where it was 'at first' repressed.

Freud has been the first to repress psychoanalysis [], and he rapidly had many disciples. During a century period, as it is usual with a symptom, psychoanalysis could been accused for what the accusation projected, e.g.: since psychoanalysis implies loss of control, it has been accused of control by the instance that was controlling.

But always as usual with symptom, it conceals the truth at hand - for instance as follow:

What my correspondent said may be readjusted as in a rebus:
<Repression is a way of life - Analysis is a tool, for progressing from this base...
<its point of view implies that we are agent of the definition process.

In PLAN diagram the agent stands outside of reality (i.e., representation and/or represented). For reality is understood either as virtual either as symptom (quasi virtual). This assertion may be surprising. Yet we are familiar with the 'exotic' view of reality as Maya (illusion), which is very close to PLAN's point of view. Lacan for instance identified his own activity as Zen. This is why my correspondent was
>thinking here of Zen and Taoist masters,
even though he was not believing that he was thinking of Psychoanalysis.

The notion of control (re:above) is likewise an imagination in this case [] - being the way we also understand an entire complexity (re:above).

Now I shall contact Michael Lissack for the 'memory files' - just a word, before I compare what I have defined with what has been said. In PLAN's model, memory is so general that I could give some years ago, a lecture titled : the Conception of Time. It was given in an Institute devoted to hypnosis. Hypnosis is closely related to memory. We must probably be aware that we will know nothing really, about memory, without knowing about time at the same moment. The understanding of hypnosis will also be requested there ; that is known for being psychoanalysis.

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FOOT NOTES

NOTE - "..MEMERY.." - I have combined 'memory' and 'meme' to emphasize the importance of the "meme" concept in the search for memory. 'Meme' has been first coined in the field of genetics - meaning the pure aspect of duplication in a gene. A sort of clone is a meme. The concept of replicator extended then to system theory and linguistics . At the same time an equivalent concept was invented in psychoanalysis, called Semblant (seaming). Meme (same) aka seaming (Semblant), equals the center of mass in a dynamics, or the grain of the mirror in an optics; as the same, it is at the hub of a memory systematics.

NOTE "..the very ground of psychoanalysis.."  & "..the first to repress psychoanalysis.."- an intensive research has been executed on Freud early writing. His attempt to ground a psychology which would equal a biophysics has been generally seen as a shameful outcome of a cocaine intoxication - and hidden and/or neglected by his disciples. It is true that the text is difficult; but a successful deciphering may be considered [], showing the coherence of the project and its relevance with a biophysics stand . Freud himself never came back onto his original project and died in a complex deny regarding the historicity of our physical bodies .

NOTE - "..undergrounded for 300 years.." & "..in the present shift, the Semblant.." - this unstable (rotative) formulation in the 20ht century,  is enabled only when the cybertechnology (digitization) is practicable  as it pervades the community today; this is why, though the Renaissance showed its access [], it had to be repressed and wait 4 centuries before being actually concevivable. This is explaining the conjuration of the  Art of Memory between Bruno and PLAN .

[except for correspondence © CYBEK of New York, 1999.]